Marcelo in the Real World

by Francisco X. Stork

  The construction was easy. Yolanda’s class even built a dog house for Namu under the tree house. The hard part was convincing Arturo to let us build it. He thought that the tree house would make me even more isolated. It took a lot of convincing but Aurora and Yolanda finally got him to agree. I still don’t know how. Arturo’s only condition was that electrical and cable wires be installed by a licensed electrician.

  The entrance to the tree house is through a trapdoor on the floor. To enter, you have to climb a ten-foot rope ladder, lift open the door, and then swing yourself up by the force of your arms. I climb up now and lie down on the cot. My fists open and close the way they do when I am angry. I don’t know what to do. I’m too restless to lie in the cot. I get up and sit on the desk chair. On the desk I have a CD player, headphones, and my laptop. I stand up and open the two windows. I sit down again and am about to grab the headphones when I hear Aurora’s voice.

  “Open up, I’m going to fall.”

  I open the trapdoor and see her barely holding on. One of her hands holds a plastic bag with a sandwich and the other hand is holding on to the rope. I take the plastic bag from her and help her up.

  “Whew,” she sighs when she’s in. “You don’t make it very easy for people to visit you, do you?”

  It occurs to me that she has only been in the tree house one other time. The afternoon that Abba died, she came up to let me know.

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Your father told me that he talked to you about working at the law firm this summer.”

  “You already knew he was going to talk to me about that. That is the reason why you asked Harry if you could talk to him for a few minutes. You wanted to tell him Marcelo was not going to be working there this summer.”

  She lowers her eyes and then raises them again. “It was important that your father be the first to tell you. He has looked forward to this for a long time now. I told Harry we would call him tomorrow and let him know. It is still your decision. Your dad said he gave you a choice.”

  “Working at Paterson is what I want.”

  “Do you see his point of view, though?”

  “I see his point of view. But he is wrong.”

  “Tell me why you think he wants you to work at the law firm.”

  “It is the real world.”

  She laughs. “You’re getting pretty good at making funny faces.”

  “It was not my intention to be funny.”

  “Your father wants you to try this type of work.”

  “Mailing letters in the mailroom.”

  “But it’s not just that. He wants to you to experience going to work and walking from the train station to the law firm by yourself and interacting with people who are…regular people. I’ve met Jasmine, the girl you’d be working with in the mailroom. She’s only a couple years older than you. You’ll like her.”

  “The children who ride the ponies at Paterson are regular people. Harry is extremely regular people.”

  She lifts herself from the floor where she is sitting and walks over to the desk chair. When she is sitting down again, she says, “Remember when I first took you to the hospital with me? You were about nine, ten?”

  “Marcelo was eight years old the first time.”

  “That little? I went to see Carmen. Remember Carmen? I went on a Saturday, even though I had the day off, because I knew she was in bad shape. I took you with me and left you in the playroom. When I came out, there you were, building a Lego castle with two other little boys. You weren’t talking to them or even playing with them really. Each of you was quietly building the castle, side by side. You know? Then after that you did all you could to go with me to work. You felt comfortable with those little children.”

  “Carmen, Joseph, they all died.”

  “Yes. I thought it was good for you to be around the children. And it was good for them. They liked you even though you hardly talked to them. You calmed them down just by being with them.”

  “Marcelo listened to them.” For some reason, I slip into the third person with Aurora.

  “But then you were always asking me to take you. I thought it was great for you and for the children. But now I have doubts.”

  “Doubts.”

  “About whether it was all right to let you be around so much suffering, so much death.”

  “Suffering and death do not affect me the way they seem to affect others.”

  “No?”

  “They are part of God’s universal order.”

  “It’s just that kids your age don’t generally think thoughts like that. They’re interested in other things, in being with their friends, in having fun. Your father would like you to experience a little of the world most people live in.”

  “What world do most people live in?”

  “Paterson and even St. Elizabeth’s, for all the suffering that you see there, are protected environments. What you do at Paterson with the ponies and the children does not take you beyond your ‘comfort zone,’ as your father says. It doesn’t challenge you or help you grow in the areas you need to develop in order to be self-sufficient. Do you understand?”

  It takes me few moments to absorb what she is saying. Then I say, “You think a seventeen-year-old should be more self-sufficient than I am.”

  “At Paterson you contribute by just being yourself. It is easy for you to be around the ponies and the kids who go there and to interact with them as much as you are able. The job at the law firm will require new skills from you, and you’ll be around people who are not always nice.”

  “You think I interact well with ponies and children because I am still a child,” I say.

  “You are childlike. And that makes you who you are.”

  “But?”

  “You need to learn how to survive.” She seems sad when she says this.

  “Marcelo is afraid.”

  “I know. That’s the point. You’re not afraid at Paterson, are you?”

  “No.”

  “So it will be good to take on this challenge and overcome it, like you’ve overcome so many other challenges already.”

  I open and close my hands rapidly. “I do not want to work there.”

  Aurora is quiet. She closes her eyes and I think that maybe her efforts to convince me have made her very tired. When she opens her eyes, she asks: “Did I ever tell you about Mr. Quintana?”

  “No.”

  “When I was your age, I had a summer job as a nurse’s aide at the Thomas Jefferson Hospital in El Paso. Mr. Quintana was an old gentleman with pancreatic cancer. He was recuperating from a bout of chemotherapy and was waiting to see whether the treatment had done any good. No one really believed that it had because pancreatic cancer is so deadly. But he knew there were a few good weeks after the treatment where he would feel more or less well. After that, there would probably come a final decline. Anyway, one day while I was cleaning his room, he asked me if I had my driver’s license and I told him that I did. Then he asked me if there was any way that I could take a trip with him to this amusement park that was supposed to have the scariest roller coaster in the country. He said that all his life he had never been on a roller coaster. He was terrified. But he didn’t want to die without taking a ride on one. While he was in the hospital he had met a couple of kids who also had cancer, and he wanted to take them on the trip as well. All he needed was someone who could drive.” Aurora stops to see if I am listening. But she knows that I am and she knows what I will ask next.

  “What happened?”

  “A little miracle, I guess. I said that I would go with him if my mother agreed, knowing full well that Abba would never agree. But then when I mentioned it to Abba she did not say no right away as I expected, but instead said that she would like to meet Mr. Quintana first. I never, never in my wildest dreams thought she would even consider it.”

  “And then?” Part of me wants to figure out why Aurora is telling me the story but another pa
rt just wants to know what happened.

  “She met him and afterward she said it was okay. It was an incredible response—from Abba. But I took the fact that she agreed so easily as a sign that the trip was meant to be. So off we went on this crazy, scary, exciting, painful, joyful adventure. A dying old man, two kids in temporary remission from cancer only a year younger than me, and a seventeen-year-old girl who had never been outside of Texas. The four of us in search of the ultimate roller coaster ride.”

  “And everyone rode the roller coaster.”

  “The scariest one. A big, rattling, wooden-frame roller coaster in Tennessee called ‘The Big Woodie.’ It had a five-second drop with a force of six Gs. But before that, I had to convince Mr. Quintana to try a couple of smaller ones. I was afraid that he would have a heart attack if he did not get used to some smaller coasters first. He was still terrified when he rode The Big Woodie, but he did it. When he got out, I asked if he was okay. You know what he said?”

  “No.”

  “He said, ‘I’ll tell you when my bolas drop back in their sack.’ Then he smiled this huge smile and said, ‘Now I can die happy.’” Aurora laughs to herself. I laugh also. I like it when Aurora occasionally uses bad words. Bolas, I know, is a Spanish slang word for testicles. (They also teach us these kinds of things at Paterson.) But as soon as I finish laughing, I try to figure out why Aurora chose to tell me this memory of hers at this particular point. I can tell that she is hoping that I will get to the moral of the story on my own. But the story has various messages and I don’t know which one to pick. Is Aurora trying to tell me that the law firm is like a scary roller coaster ride where my own testicles will travel up to my throat, figuratively speaking? I have no idea what this feels like, but I sincerely hope this is not the case.

  When she sees that I am having problems responding, she says, “It’s just for the summer. Your father means it when he says that at the end of the summer you will decide where to go for your senior year.”

  “Aurora.”

  “Yes?”

  “Do others see me as a child?”

  “You look like any other young man. Better. You’re better-looking than most. You’re tall and handsome and strong.”

  “Like Arturo.”

  “Yes.”

  “But sometimes I think like a child.”

  “You are who you are.”

  “If I am who I am, why is it not possible for me to work at a place where I can be who I am?”

  She laughs and shakes her head. “You’ll learn new skills and ways to deal and cope with life at the law firm.”

  “Different from what I can learn at Paterson?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  She pauses. She takes a deep breath before she speaks. “A couple of months after our trip, Mr. Queen—that’s what we called Mr. Quintana—died. That’s when I decided that I wanted to work with children who had cancer. I always wanted to be a nurse, but it was after that trip, during his funeral, that I decided what kind of nurse I wanted to be. Of all the types of nursing, this was the one that scared me the most, but also the one where I was most likely to say at the end of my days, ‘Now I can die happy.’

  “But I realized that in order to work with children I needed to be gentle and strong. Gentle and caring with the children, but strong and tough with all that threatens to increase their suffering or diminish their chances to be healed. At St. Elizabeth’s sometimes I have to protect the children from arrogant or even negligent doctors. Sometimes I have to protect them from the so-called ‘healthy.’ I protect them from hospital bureaucrats, from insurance companies. Sometimes I have to protect them from their own parents. I protect them even from their own negative thoughts at times. I wouldn’t be able to do that, to protect them, unless I was an adult, unless I was strong, unless I was willing to fight for them. Do you see?”

  “Yes.” It is true. I see how Aurora is gentle and strong. Then I add, “I do not want to go to Oak Ridge next year. A regular high school is not for Marcelo. I do not fit in. Aurora just said that Marcelo does not think about the same things that most other kids think about. At Paterson, the kind of things I’m interested in or the way I think do not matter. I can learn better there where there is no concern about how Marcelo is different. Aurora was able to choose on her own what she wanted to do. Abba didn’t tell her that she couldn’t be a nurse. No one prevented her from working with children. After Paterson I want to be a nurse like Aurora and work with Haflinger ponies and disabled kids. I do not see the difference.”

  She grins. “Just then you sounded very much like your father the lawyer.” Then she stops grinning and nods that she understands. “You won’t have to go to a regular high school in the fall if that’s what you decide. And after that, well, no one will prevent you from choosing your own path. If you want to do what your mother does, heaven help you, no one will stop you.”

  “Arturo said that I will get to decide only if I succeed in following the rules of the real world for three months.”

  “Work in the law firm and do your best to be helpful. That’s all you need to do. You will decide.” She stands up and holds her hand over my head and then she tousles my hair. “Now help me down,” she says.

  When she has reached the ground, I stick my head through the trapdoor and call to her, “Aurora.”

  “Yes?” She is looking up at me.

  “Marcelo will work at the law firm.”

  “Good,” she says, “good. Your father wants you to start on Monday.”

  “Monday is only two days away.”

  “It’s better to just dive in and not think about it too much. I’ll call Harry and let him know. Unless you prefer to call him yourself.”

  “Call him tonight. He will need time to find a new stable man for the summer.”

  “Or stable woman,” Aurora says.

  “Whoever it is must be told that it is only a summer job.”

  “You will decide,” she says as she waves good-bye. “Oh. I still have to register you for Oak Ridge next week. But it doesn’t mean you’ll go there. I promised your father. I want you to know.”

  “You can register Marcelo, but it is a futile act. He will not be going there in September.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I turn off the alarm clock after the first beep. There are only a few nights in my life when I have not slept through the night, but the night that just ended is one of them. I lay awake, immobile inside my sleeping bag, listening to the strange sounds in my head. The IM was different. It was disjointed, jagged, with unexpected flashes, like the streaks of lightning that light up the night during an electric storm.

  I was not able to complete a full day’s schedule like I usually do because I wasn’t sure when Arturo and I would return home from the law firm. Tonight, when I know the train schedule coming home, I’ll be able to do a full one. Without a schedule to guide me through the day, I feel disoriented. This is the schedule for this morning I prepared last night:

  5:00 A.M. WAKE UP

  5:05 A.M. REMEMBERING

  5:35 A.M. FEED NAMU

  5:40 A.M. DUMBBELLS

  6:00 A.M. CONTINUE WITH READING OF PSALMS

  6:30 A.M. BREAKFAST (INSTANT CREAM OF WHEAT, BROWN SUGAR, BANANA, ORANGE JUICE)

  6:45 A.M. SHOWER AND DRESS

  7:00 A.M. WAIT FOR ARTURO TO GO TO TRAIN STATION

  Arturo informed me that we would catch the seven forty-five train out of West Orchard, which is about twenty minutes away driving at the speed limit. Arturo says he can do it in ten minutes, no problem.

  I carry out each task on the schedule as planned, and at seven I’m sitting in the rocking chair in the den, the backpack with the things I plan to take to the law firm by my feet.

  I hear Aurora’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “Good morning,” she says when she sees me. “You look very elegant today.”

  Aurora says that every single morning despite the fact that I usually wear the same thing: w
hite button-down shirt (short sleeves in the summer, long sleeves in the winter), blue cotton pants (summer) or blue corduroy pants (winter), black socks, and black sneakers.

  “Aurora looks very elegant,” I say. Aurora has on white nurse’s pants, a mint-green blouse with yellow smiley faces, white stockings, and white shoes with thick, white rubber soles.

  “I made you lunch.” She takes a paper bag from the refrigerator and brings it to me. I open up my red backpack and place the paper bag inside. “Thank you, Mother, for making me lunch,” she says, to remind me.

  “Thank you, Mother, for making me lunch,” I say, mimicking her.

  She sits on the sofa facing me. “Are you nervous?”

  “Yes,” I answer without any hesitation whatsoever.

  “It’s normal to be nervous. You don’t know what to expect. But tomorrow you will be less nervous and soon going to the law firm will be a routine.”

  Routine. Whenever I hear that word I think of a route that is not a full route, only a tiny route. I wonder if it’s the change to all my tiny routes that is making me nervous, or is it just that I am still resentful at being forced to do something I don’t like?

  “Tell me what you are thinking,” Aurora urges me. “It’s okay to say whatever it is you feel.”

  I turn my head away from her. I’m thinking that it isn’t just Arturo and Aurora who are conspiring against my peace of mind. After the night I just had and the noises that rumbled through my head, it seems that God Himself has it in for me.

  “No,” I say to Aurora. I regularly say no when people ask me to tell them what I’m thinking.

  “Okay. I’m going to be a mother and tell you motherly things for a few seconds. You need to be alert when you are walking downtown. Cross the streets only when the white walk sign is on, the way we practiced.” She takes a cell phone out of her pocket. “I want you to keep this with you at all times. I programmed the phone to speed dial my phone, your dad’s, Rabbi Heschel’s, and Yolanda’s. On the back of the phone I taped the speed-dial numbers. Keep the phone on at all times. Let’s try it to make sure it works.” She pushes a number and puts the phone to her ear. “Hello. Yoli? It’s me. Marcelo’s ready to go work with Dad. You want to say hi to him?” She hands me the phone. “It’s Yolanda.”